Mistress Maven Part 1: Misconceptions of Life

Relationships are based on three; it’s what the mistress role is about. I set out to make the best of it myself due to the circumstances of my marriage and the state my life was in at the time. I’ll say it’s no joke to unravel life’s doings, which left me with the question “did I choose my life or did my life choose me?”

“As a girl child” my father told me, “you don’t need education.” In my psyche that seed was planted. I was told that my place was in the home to be wholly dependent on my husband to take care of him and raise the children. As a result, many days I was never sent to school.

Formal education was the last thing on my caretakers’ minds. There were always chores for me to do: fetching water, getting wood, bringing in the milk from the cows and goats. These kept me from being sent to school or getting there on time when I was sent at all. Work came first, last and always.

Throughout my childhood hugs, kisses, even kind words were things I was not given.This situation was not unique to me. It was the norm in those days in the community I was raised that children were seen but not heard. We usually got the raw end of the stick.

Though my father never failed to tell me where my place was, a better, sounder foundation was missing from my life.

Those seeds planted in me through my father’s words left their mark; they were the platform on which my life and marriage had started.

My father’s words served a purpose that offered me no confidence, no self-respect, no self-worth, no security to face and deal with life’s reality. He failed to equip me with the means for making it so. I, who would be ripened by Nature, knew little of myself or of life itself, like a vulnerable sheep without its proper clothing.

At the age of 18, I got married without happiness or joy to comfort my heart. I did it with the beliefs I held. At that time I had one child and was pregnant with the other. I had seen the difficulties other women faced having two children without being married. They were put in vulnerable positions where another man would then come in and take his opportunity to add to the list without commitment. There was no way I was not going to marry the father of my children.

I was split into so many parts. I didn’t know myself, or how to be a mother or a wife. In taking vows I repeated those words “I do” but what did I do? What did I know? What did I understand?

I already had my first son and was expecting my second when we got married on the January 15, 1960. Just two days later my husband left for America to learn molding at an engineering company in Chicago. This skill allowed him to later work in England. When he went across to England two years later, he sent for us to join him.

I arrived in London with my two sons September 1962, to join their father, my husband, whom I had not seen in 3 yrs. Like any wife after prolonged absence from her husband I expected sex only to find there would be none.

I consulted our family physician who told me that my husband was impotent. How? When? I asked. The doctor explained that my husband had a strained gland and it was better for him not to have sex to prevent him from aggravating his condition. And here it all connected for me.

When our relationship first started and we had sex, he experienced difficulties resulting in continuous discharge. At that time, I was living with my sister. One Sunday morning he came with his friend to see me. In front of this friend, he accused me of giving him a venereal disease. I was shocked and embarrassed and tried to hang myself with a piece of rope.

My sister caught me and asked what happened. I told her what Ronald had said.“Don’t worry,” she said, “If it is so, we will know tomorrow. I’ll take you to see the doctor in Black River.”